#position statement

[lavender-gayz]

'glinda, is it true you were her FRIEND?' loving the thought of there being staunch believers in glinda's straightness in oz who over-identify with her relationship with fiyero and feel they have to defend her from accusations of lesbian behaviour. is it an open secret that madame morrible made everyone at shiz sign NDAs? does some eagle-eyed citizen swear they saw elphaba caressing glinda's face at the top of the palace and produce a blurry sketch as proof? is glinda overheard softly singing 'i'm not her girl' to herself one day, thereby sparking hushed but lively discussions in small gaylinda circles?

[23fallencomets]

Logan at nashville and kyle getting pole position the world is healing

[anghraine]

Speaking of the social context of P&P and Austen in general, and also just literature of that era, I'm always interested in how things like precisely formulated hierarchies of precedence and tables of ranked social classes interact with the more complex and nuanced details of class-based status and consequence on a pragmatic day-to-day level. I remembered reading a social historian discussing the pragmatics of class wrt eighteenth-century English life many years ago and finally tracked down the source:

"In spite of the number of people who got their living from manufacture or trade, fundamentally it was a society in which the ownership of land alone conveyed social prestige and full political rights. ... The apex of this society was the nobility. In the eyes of the Law only members of the House of Lords, the peerage in the strictest use of the word, were a class apart, enjoying special privileges and composing one of the estates of the realm. Their families were commoners: even the eldest sons of peers could sit in the House of Commons. It was therefore in the social rather than in the legal sense of the word that English society was a class society. Before the law all English people except the peers were in theory equal. Legal concept and social practice were, however, very different. When men spoke of the nobility, they meant the sons and daughters, the brothers and sisters, the uncles and aunts and cousins of the peers. They were an extremely influential and wealthy group.

"The peers and their near relations almost monopolized high political office. From these great families came the wealthiest Church dignitaries, the higher ranks in the army and navy. Many of them found a career in law; some even did not disdain the money to be made in trade. What gave this class its particular importance in the political life of the day was the way in which it was organized on a basis of family and connection ... in eighteenth-century politics men rarely acted as isolated individuals. A man came into Parliament supported by his friends and relations who expected, in return for this support, that he would further their interests to the extent of his parliamentary influence.

"Next in both political and social importance came the gentry. Again it is not easy to define exactly who were covered by this term. The Law knew nothing of gentle birth but Society recognized it. Like the nobility this group too was as a class closely connected with land. Indeed, the border line between the two classes is at times almost impossible to define ... Often these men are described as the squirearchy, this term being used to cover the major landowning families in every county who were not connected by birth with the aristocracy. Between them and the local nobility there was often considerable jealousy. The country gentleman considered himself well qualified to manage the affairs of his county without aristocratic interference.

"...The next great layer in society is perhaps best described the contemporary term 'the Middling Sort'. As with all eighteenth-century groups it is difficult to draw a clear line of demarcation between them and their social superiors and inferiors. No economic line is possible, for a man with no pretensions to gentility might well be more prosperous than many a small squire. There was even on the fringe between the two classes some overlapping of activities ... The ambitious upstart who bought an estate and spent his income as a gentleman, might be either cold-shouldered by his better-born neighbours or treated by them with a certain contemptuous politeness. If however his daughters were presentable and well dowered, and if his sons received the education considered suitable for gentlemen, the next generation would see the obliteration of whatever distinction still remained. The solid mass of the middling sort had however no such aspirations, or considered them beyond their reach.

"...This term [the poor] was widely used to designate the great mass of the manual workers. Within their ranks differences of income and of outlook were as varied as those that characterized the middle class. Once again the line of demarcation is hard to draw..."

—Dorothy Marshall, Eighteenth Century England (29-34)

(There's plenty more interesting information in the full chapter, especially regarding "the poor," and the chapter itself is contracted from a lengthier version published earlier.)

[qiu-yan]

in order to say "wei wuxian is morally good," you must first define what it means to be morally good

though this is by no means exclusive to them, one logical fallacy i sometimes see wei wuxian stans make in their arguments is that they begin their analysis of wei wuxian as a character with the statement "wei wuxian is morally good."

so their argument becomes:

wei wuxian is morally good.

a morally good person would do XYZ.

therefore, wei wuxian would do XYZ.

alternatively, when they're objecting to someone else's argument about wei wuxian, their counterargument becomes:

this argument says that wei wuxian would do ABC.

a morally good person would not do ABC.

wei wuxian is morally good.

therefore, wei wuxian would not do ABC; the other person's argument is wrong.

while this is in fact a valid argument structure to use for other kinds of traits (ie. "brave," "doesn't think of the consequences," even something like "afraid of dogs"), this format of argument in fact cannot be used for a descriptor as vague as "morally good"--because, unlike the other traits, "morally good" is not precisely defined enough for the above argument structure to work.

"morally good" is not a character trait in the same way that "wants to defend the weak," "is angered by innocent people being harmed," and "does not fear consequences" are character traits, because what is considered "moral" can vary significantly from person to person. what a utilitarian considers to be moral, for example, diverges significantly from what a deontologist considers to be moral. if i were to say "wei wuxian is a morally good person," i have frankly said less about wei wuxian's personality and more about what i myself believe to be ethical.

thus, the reason why the above argument pretty much never works in the wild is that the depolyers in question rarely actually define what they mean by "morally good."

consider the case in which two different wei wuxian stans write on their blogs "wei wuxian is a good person." however, the first person follows a moral philosophy that centers courage in the face of certain failure, while the second person follows a moral philosophy that centers reason and pragmatism. thus, what the first person actually means to say is "wei wuxian is someone who courageously chooses the correct path even when he is doomed to fail," while what the second person actually means to say is "wei wuxian is a reasonable and pragmatic person." these are no longer the same statement.

or consider the case in which the first stan follows a moral philosophy that centers agent-neutral harm reduction, while the second stan follows a moral philosophy that centers agent-relative reciprocity. in this case, what the first person actually means to say is "wei wuxian is someone who helps others regardless of whether they've helped him before," while what the second person actually means to say is "wei wuxian is someone who always repays kindnesses done unto him." again, these are no longer the same statement.

in general, if one wishes to argue that "blorbo is morally good," one must first specify what exactly they mean by "morally good," because not everyone follows the same definition of "morally good." many blorbo stans, however, don't actually do this. instead, they write their arguments as if their own definition of morality is already universal law; a reader can thus only reverse-engineer what the op believes to be morally good from their post. and this leads to no shortage of disagreements: two different blorbo enjoyers might find themselves in an argument over what they believe to be their blorbo's characterization, when in reality they are actually disagreeing over what it means to be ethical at all.

on the topic of disagreement, another fact that must be acknowledged is that wei wuxian himself is also a character with his own specific thoughts and feelings. wei wuxian is not an abstract paragon of righteousness whose definition of morality just so happens to perfectly match the reader's definition of morality; wei wuxian is a specific fictional character with his own specific thoughts as to what is right and what is wrong. and every reader has to accept that what wei wuxian considers to be right can in fact be gleaned from the text--and that what wei wuxian considers to be right will not always match what the reader considers to be right. wei wuxian might, in fact, disagree with you.

thus, if you want to make any sort of statement regarding wei wuxian's moral character (whether that be "he is morally good" or "he is morally bad") you in fact have to consider not just one, but four different questions:

what do you consider to be morally good? what moral framework and/or school of moral philosophy do you use to determine what is ethical?

how well do wei wuxian's actions adhere to what you personally consider to be morally good?

what does wei wuxian consider to be morally good? what moral framework and/or school of moral philosophy does he use to determine what is ethical?

how well do wei wuxian's actions adhere to what he himself considers to be morally good?

all of these are different questions! they cannot be conflated with each other.

to write a good analysis, you must accept that [what you consider to be morally good] will not always match [what wei wuxian considers to be morally good]. when such disagreements arise, rather than distort wei wuxian's character to match what you personally believe to be morally good, perhaps consider just allowing wei wuxian to disagree with you instead. even if he's doing something you honestly can't defend, maybe wei wuxian is still striving to live as best he can according to his own ideals, and it just so happens that his ideals do not match your ideals. you really should not distort wei wuxian's motives or beliefs just to make him more palatable to you, simply because you have wedded yourself to the idea that "wei wuxian must be morally good by my own standards."

closing thoughts: this isn't really exclusive to wei wuxian stans. i've seen all sorts of character stans in all sorts of fandoms make this same logical fallacy. i certainly think that some of the jiang cheng analyses i see from fellow jiang cheng stans are born less from an objective analysis of his character and moreso from the op's desire for his actions to align with their moral compass. but, out of all the characters in MDZS, it seems like people commit this logical fallacy when discussing wei wuxian specifically far more often than they do with any other character, save perhaps lan wangji.

[swollenbabyfat]

Do you ever meet someone and wanna rip the artist out of them

[son1c]

shadow describing that one unfinished/decaying shatterspace as a "cruel" torture zone... really gets me because it means that he cares. not just about the world in general but about the people in it. he has friends too and seeing the ghost of rouge repeat herself endlessly and never be able to see him even when he stands right in front of her... yeah that is cruel.

[there-are-4-lights]

from here

[paranormaltheatrekid]

I genuinely think a person’s tumblr blog is a glance into their psyche.

[puppmeo]

My gender is the lesbian version of whatever Brian David Gilbert and Brennan Lee Mulligan have goin on

[the-elder-polls]

seeing y'all talk about your protags is so fun because i love seeing how creative you all are. it is also fun to compare my protags to yours and imagine them meeting and how hilariously awkward my protags would be

[coochiequeens]

Woman’ is not an ambiguous term open to an evolving interpretation.” - the attorneys representing the women who want to keep the sorority house they pay $8,000 for male free.

By Genevieve Gluck December 14, 2023

The female complainants at the center of a lawsuit to have a trans-identified male removed from a sorority at the University of Wyoming have re-filed their appeal, demanding the court clearly define the word “woman.” Artemis Langford, previously known as Dallin, was accepted into Kappa Kappa Gamma (KKG) last September, spurring several women to file a lawsuit to have him removed.

In August, the case of Westenbroek v. Kappa Kappa Gamma Fraternity was dismissed on the basis that re-defining “woman” to include males was “Kappa Kappa Gamma’s bedrock right.” Despite hearing testimony from the women, some of whom stated Langford had “watched” them undress with an erection, Judge Alan Johnson rejected the women’s request to rescind Langford’s admission into the sorority.

However, on December 4, the young women filed an appeal to have the dismissal reversed, arguing that Langford’s presence in the sorority house “caused emotional distress in a personalized and unique way,” and demanding that the court clearly define the word “woman.”

In the appeal, the women reassert that Langford displayed “strange and sexual behavior” towards them, and caused them a level of discomfort and anxiety amounting to personal injury. It reiterates claims that Langford had been filming and photographing the women without their consent and had displayed a visible erection while in the house.

“Specifically, Langford’s unwanted staring, photographing, and videotaping of the Plaintiffs, as well as his asking questions about sex and displaying a visible erection while in the house, invaded Plaintiffs’ privacy and caused emotional distress in a personalized and unique way. And thus Plaintiffs have pleaded a viable direct claim. This Court should therefore reverse the district court’s dismissal of Plaintiffs’ derivative and direct claims,” the appeal reads.

Some of the allegations are a reiteration of previous claims, which Langford’s attorney, Rachel Berkness, has attempted to portray as both false and discriminatory during court proceedings. In June, Berkness filed a motion to dismiss the sorority women’s claims against Langford as “frivolous and malicious,” stating: “The allegations against Ms. Langford … were borne out of a hypothesis in search of evidence and pieced together using drunken party stories. Ms. Langford is not a victim; she is a target.”

The initial suit, filed at the end of March, had asserted that Langford, who is 6’2″, had been voyeuristically peeping on the women while they were in intimate situations, and, on at least one occasion, had a visible erection while doing so.

“One sorority member walked down the hall to take a shower, wearing only a towel … She felt an unsettling presence, turned, and saw [Langford] watching her silently,” the court document reads.

“[Langford] has, while watching members enter the sorority house, had an erection visible through his leggings,” the suit says. “Other times, he has had a pillow in his lap.”

As evidenced by his Tinder profile, Langford is “sexually interested in women.” It was further stated in that Langford took photographs of the women while at a sorority slumber party, where he also is said to have made inappropriate comments.

“At a slumber party, Langford ‘repeatedly questioned the women about what vaginas look like, [and] breast cup size,’ and stared as one Plaintiff changed her clothes,” reads the appeal. “Langford also talked about his virginity and discussed at what age it would be appropriate for someone to have sex… And he stated that he would not leave one of the sorority’s sleepovers until after everyone fell asleep.”

Langford was also said to have taken pictures of female members “without their knowledge or consent.” Some of the women noted that they had “observed Langford writing detailed notes about [the students] and their statements and behavior.”

In May, a judge twice prohibited the women from suing anonymously, while stipulating that Langford’s identity should remain protected. Langford was referred to by the pseudonym “Terry Smith” and male pronouns in the legal documents. Six of the women then refiled the lawsuit under their own names, and are requesting that the court void Langford’s membership in KKG.

“It is really uncomfortable. Some of the girls have been sexually assaulted or sexually harassed. Some girls live in constant fear in our home,” one of the sisters, Hannah, told Megyn Kelly during an interview on her podcast.

Rather than addressing the privacy and safety concerns of the women in KKG, who had each paid $8,000 to live in the sorority house, “Kappa officials recommended that … they should quit Kappa Kappa Gamma entirely.”

In June, the sorority filed a motion to dismiss the suit, calling it a “frivolous” attempt to eject Langford for “their own political purposes.” According to the motion, the women suing were flinging “dehumanizing mud” in order to “bully Ms. Langford on the national stage.” The sorority invited the women to resign their membership “if a position of inclusion is too offensive for their personal values.”

In the motion, lawyers for Kappa Kappa Gamma attempted to depict the suit as an attempt by “a vocal minority” to impose their views on Langford and the rest of the sorority members.

“Perhaps the greatest wrongs in this case are not the ones Plaintiffs and their supporters imagine they have suffered, but the ones that they have inflicted through their conduct since filing the Complaint,” they wrote. “Regardless of personal views on the rights of transgender people, the cruelty that Plaintiffs and their supporters have shown towards Langford and anyone in Kappa who supports Langford is disturbing.”

The recent appeal against the suit’s dismissal, filed on behalf of the young women by Sylvia May Mailman of the Independent Women’s Law Center, the Law Office of John G. Knepper, Schaerr Jaffe LLP, and Cassie Craven of Longhorn Law firm, details several alleged violations of the sorority sisters’ rights, as well as KKG’s own policies.

“The question at the heart of this case is the definition of ‘woman,’ a term that Kappa has used since 1870 to prescribe membership, in Kappa’s governing documents,” the appeal states. “Using any conceivable tool of contractual interpretation, the term refers to biological females. And yet, the district court avoided this inevitable conclusion by applying the wrong law and ignoring the factual assertions in the complaint.”

It goes on to note that from 1870 to 2018, KKG defined “woman” to exclude “transgender women” and that any new definition may not be enacted without a KKG bylaw amendment.

Numerous examples are given of rules put forward by the sorority which use the term “woman,” with the attorneys maintaining that “‘woman’ is not an ambiguous term open to an evolving interpretation.”

KKG leaders who approved Langford’s membership have “subverted Kappa’s mission and governing documents by changing the definition of ‘woman’ without following the required processes.” Kappa President Mary Pat Rooney’s legal team has argued that Langford’s admission into the sorority was based on a 2015 position statement which asserts that KKG “is a single-gender organization comprised of women and individuals who identify as women.”

However, the women’s legal appeal points out that KKG can only change its membership criteria by amending its Bylaws, a process which requires a two-thirds majority approval vote by a Convention of board members. As a Convention to amend Bylaws to reflect the position statement was never held, the appeal states, Langford’s acceptance into KKG is a violation of accepted policies.

KKG leadership is also accused of using “coercive” tactics during the process of voting Langford into the organization in September 2022. After an initial anonymous vote conducted via Google poll failed to result in Langford’s acceptance into the sorority, Chapter leaders developed a second, non-anonymous voting system in which multiple sisters changed their votes because of “fear of reprisal.”

In addition to denying women anonymity, Wyoming chapter officials, after consultation with Kappa’s leadership, had told members that voting against Langford’s admission was evidence of “bigotry” that “is a basis for suspension or expulsion from the Sorority.”

Curiously, prior court documents also reveal that Langford was admitted to KKG despite not even meeting their basic academic eligibility requirements. 

While KKG requires applicants to have a 2.7 Grade Point Average (GPA), Langford only had a 1.9 at the time he submitted his membership request, and was not on a grade probation. The legal complaint notes that this indicates Langford’s application was “evaluated using a different standard.”

In November, two longstanding alumni members of KKG revealed they had been expelled in an apparent retaliation for advocating that membership be restricted to females only. Patsy Levang and Cheryl Tuck-Smith had been members of the sorority for over 50 years, and had contributed to fundraising efforts for the organization.

Despite their long history of supporting KKG, Levang and Tuck-Smith were voted out by the sorority’s national leadership on November 9. Levang had been the past Kappa Kappa Gamma National Foundation President, while Tuck-Smith was an active contributor and organizer.

The women’s removal came after they had been vocally opposed to the admission of Langford to the KKG chapter at the University of Wyoming, and had supported a lawsuit launched by members of that sorority to have him removed.

Since news of the lawsuit first became widely circulated, Langford has received ample sympathetic coverage in mainstream media, with one MSNBC host labeling him “brave and unique.” In a recent profile by the Washington Post, Langford was given a platform to accuse the sorority sisters involved in the suit of lying while being compared to women who had historically been denied the right to a basic education.

[enjoyvoidblack]

I have a lot of Thoughts about the issue of Jon's humanity. There's a lot made of how he's not human anymore in seasons 3 and 4, before and after the coma, and I could debate the usefulness of "human" as a term for morality and connectedness all day, but that's not the point. Regardless of the presentation, some sort of disconnect between him and the others is definitely there. By mid- season 4 he is fully leaning into feeding on the fears of others, into being something more of the horrors he knows than of the people around him, and that's not a shift that came from nothing. However. My hot take is this: I think Jon's disconnect both exists, and is also entirely for human reasons.

Up until season 4 Jon is three things. He is confused, afraid, and wildly out of his depth. His arc is a constant scramble to figure out what's going on three steps behind the curve, getting in too deep before he even knows what he's getting into, losing people before he even fully nails down what he lost them to. Tim sees him as uncaring because he's isolated and not acting to help matters, but that's because he doesn't know enough to help, and he's leaning hard into figuring that out instead of being around for emotional support - which is...debatably the wrong approach, but also extremely in character. One of the only things he took initiative on was smashing that table, and we all know how that turned out. By season 3, he's antsy enough with how little he knows and how little he can do that he shows up on Jude Perry's doorstep in the hopes that she'll be merciful. Point being: this man doesn't have the first clue what he's been pulled into, and the game he's been playing is nothing more than trying desperately to figure it out just in time for the next big thing to go less devastatingly wrong.

Then he dies.

Then, he wakes up feeling on top of it.

He says in the episodes after the coma that he feels revitalized. He feels in control. He finally feels like he fits with all of this. He is more of what's happening around him than he is a victim now, and that feels good. He can escape the coffin, he can square up with Jarod, he is self-assured and has tools of his own to truly know things for the first time in years. Just imagine that for a second. Imagine the most uncertain, most uneasy, most fearful time in your life, stretched over years feeling like people you know (or you!) (or the whole world!) are going to die if you can't solve a puzzle you don't even know the shape of it yet, and then somebody takes off your blindfold. You don't have to feel around for the pieces anymore. You can just see them, and move them.

Of course you're going to reach for them. Of course you're going to take the first sense of real control you've felt in years and lean into it. ...Maybe, depending on who you are and whether you have anyone around you who's willing to check you, even if you break a few eggs to make an omelette along the way. Even if those eggs are people who see you in their sleep and wake up screaming. Especially if you've spent those last few years absorbing every minute of your predecessor's recorded words on the importance of being ruthless in order to save the world.

Jon didn't start leaning into his abilities regardless of the cost because he's a monster. Jon did that because he's human, and scared, and then handed a means of relieving that fear. Better to be a wolf than a sheep. Better still, if you can convince yourself (with the help of some Classic Elias Manipulation) that it's for the good of the world, and any harm caused and the discomfort it causes you is a sacrifice that needs to be made. Jon makes sense, to me. In my mind he doesn't need to be a monster in some ambiguously defined sense to explain his shift in attitude. The explanation is there in full: a man in a rowboat on a turbulent ocean of fear, now given a motor.

(The fact that he was so consistently called a monster by Basira, one of his few points of contact still remaining in Peter Lukas's Lonely-flavoured Institute, also certainly didn't help his leaning into it at all, but that's probably an essay for another day. Confirmation bias is a hell of a thing, and I'm sure being made to think he had no other options made it all the more easy to tell himself the same.)

[americanhellkmart]

wjenever i see ppl like my story literally 1 second after it posts .. i know u have notifs on #fag

[codgod-archive]

i’m not going to say qsmp is going to shut down but at this point i do genuinely think that shutting down, restructuring and getting everything else sorted, and then doing a full reset for qsmp 2: workers rights edition is maybe like. necessary. at this point

[skunkes]

i dont like when character being blunt/having no filter = character just being Mean, and im trying to find a good balance with that for Talon. I guess it's not that hard since he's not an (active) overthinker and I have drawn him saying things he considers neutral that seem rude to others...I guess I have to find a way to show the opposite, too

[channelslam]

sooo inchresting to me how jannik talks ab locker room dynamics in the atp etc etc… obvs he has a unique perspective about it (ban and all) but hmm yeah idk i feel like he talks ab it in a way other players dont